Pink Gold Samsung Galaxy S7 & Lens Cover unboxing and hands-on review

If you’re in the market for something a bit different we’ve found two offerings from Samsung to tickle your fancy – the new pink gold Galaxy S7 and the official Lens Cover case.

Pink Gold Samsung Galaxy S7

It’s no secret that we’re always going to welcome a little more colour into the world of mobile technology, but the new pink gold Galaxy S7 is the perfect answer to Apple’s rose gold iPhone 6S. Compared to its leading rival’s peachy hue, the pink gold S7 adopts a darker, punchier tone, sat behind the curved glass back and front bezel of the phone’s body.

The metalwork that makes up the sides of the phone, the hardware controls and dresses the surrounds of both the home button and the camera are all hewn from a lighter shade, providing a nice contrast. Even the plastic elements that reside within the antenna breaks and around the phone’s microUSB port are tinted pink, tieing the whole colourway together.

One glaring omission appears to a complementary theme to match on the software side. By default the pink gold S7 boots into the tried-and-true dark blue default theme you’ll have seen in all out S7/S7 Edge coverage thus far, but it really works against the phone’s new outfit. As such we took the liberty of installing an official theme from the Samsung App Store, adding a perfectly-suited pink wallpaper and app icons into the mix.

Carphone Warehouse (who provided us with the handset) has nabbed exclusivity on the full suite of pink Samsung handsets so far in 2016, so if it’s your colour of choice, it’s the only place you’ll find the pink Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, A3 and A5, under one roof.

Galaxy S7 Lens Cover

In case you haven’t heard, the Samsung Galaxy S7 sports an excellent camera. The 12-megapixel sensor leverages dual pixel technology to bring faster, more accurate auto-focus to the table in a wider range of conditions and it boasts image stabilisation, 4K video recording and an f/1.7 aperture for superior low light performance versus pretty much every other smartphone on the market too. In real world use, that all translates to some of the best all-round performance from a smartphone camera, plus plenty of creative shooting modes to add even more talents to this phone’s already diverse bag of tricks.

Piggybacking off of the phone’s camera prowess, Samsung has taken things a step further, with the release of the Lens Cover; a four piece set that adds two additional lenses to augment your S7 photographic experience. Not too dissimilar from the likes of Olloclip’s and Moment’s lens systems available for the iPhone, the official S7 Lens Cover lets you attach some serious glass to modify your phone’s shooting ability without any loss in image quality.

The case itself is a black, all-plastic offering with a faux leather texture and a subtle ridged bump at one end to improve handheld grip and stability when shooting. The inside is lined with an Alcantara-like finish to keep the glass back of your S7 smudge-free and there are handy cut-outs along each side so the phone’s volume and power buttons are still readily accessible. A screw thread would have been a nice inclusion as it would have allowed the case to affix directly to a tripod, not unlike the Camera Grip Case Cover for the Nokia Lumia 1020, but it’s still a nice improvement on the slippy finish of a naked S7.

One key difference to the likes of an Olloclip lens is the sheer size of the glass included in the box. Each one measures just under 40mm in diameter and adopts a high-quality finish, with a polished, brushed metal body. The larger of the two, the telephoto also measures in at 30.8mm deep adding significant heft to the otherwise svelte smartphone. The size of the lenses also means that you’ll need to rely on external light sources for illumination, as they cover the S7’s integrated LED flash when screwed onto the case.

Shots from the telephoto lens offer 2x magnification, which has its benefits for distant subjects, or when correcting image distortion on closer objects, whilst the wide-angle lens feels like the more versatile offering, with an 110-degree field of view that adds a stylised fisheye effect for shots, ideal for artistic photographic moments, capturing action from a first-person perspective or indeed to simply squeeze more faces into a group selfie.

When you don’t have one of the two lenses screwed into the cover you can store them in the included carry case, which appears to offer some level of shot protection on top of keeping out moisture and dust. The covers also double as lens caps, so you can keep the glass protected, even if you don’t want to put one of your lenses away completely.

The official Galaxy S7 Lens Cover isn’t the perfect photographic accessory, but it’s one of the only ways to achieve certain photographic effects without losing quality and seems like a smart means of augmenting the phone’s natural camera capabilities. You can pick it up from the likes of MobileFun.co.uk for £99.